Ah yeah, that sounds like the right direction. As realistic a work exchange as it can be would be ideal, at least from my perspective. I have test anxiety pretty bad and a clock ticking away paralyzes me. But if the time limit is less important than the dialog, then that seems like it should work well. I know that not everyone has that timer anxiety but I'm finding out that it is more common than most people think. If split-second decision making is mission-critical, then by all means, hold the candidate's feet to the fire. But if they will just be working a roadmap and delivering features, then adding in hard time limits just shrinks your valid candidate pool. My three cents (inflation, don't ya know).
Interviewing your own interviewers for calibration and training them goes a long way too.
Asking managers for their north star and justification helps too.
On a side note, most Managers like to grow by adding more people to their team (horizontal growth) more than working on the growth of their existing team (vertical growth). If we reward vertical growth more than horizontal growth for managers, we will automatically discourage inflated hiring and hire only what’s required.
Curious how you assess "skills and experience"? Code challenges so rarely reflect actual work, and even when they do, they often also involve time pressure, which *hopefully* isn't reflective of your actual work culture. The smartest thing a hiring manager said to me was that teams need a diverse make up of skills and personalities... that a team full of "alpha dogs" is doomed.
One good way to assess whether or not someone can do the work, and gels well with the team, is to have them prepare a case study to present to a group of folks he/she would be working with. The case should be based off an existing problem for the biz, and its important to let the candidate know they should only spend [4] hours prepping, and limit the output to a few slides, to be respectful of their time. Interviewers need to be briefed in terms of calibrating the expectations.
Often times - the best candidates will start a back and forth with their hiring manager even prior to coming in, thereby simulating what it's like to work together.
Ah yeah, that sounds like the right direction. As realistic a work exchange as it can be would be ideal, at least from my perspective. I have test anxiety pretty bad and a clock ticking away paralyzes me. But if the time limit is less important than the dialog, then that seems like it should work well. I know that not everyone has that timer anxiety but I'm finding out that it is more common than most people think. If split-second decision making is mission-critical, then by all means, hold the candidate's feet to the fire. But if they will just be working a roadmap and delivering features, then adding in hard time limits just shrinks your valid candidate pool. My three cents (inflation, don't ya know).
Interviewing your own interviewers for calibration and training them goes a long way too.
Asking managers for their north star and justification helps too.
On a side note, most Managers like to grow by adding more people to their team (horizontal growth) more than working on the growth of their existing team (vertical growth). If we reward vertical growth more than horizontal growth for managers, we will automatically discourage inflated hiring and hire only what’s required.
Curious how you assess "skills and experience"? Code challenges so rarely reflect actual work, and even when they do, they often also involve time pressure, which *hopefully* isn't reflective of your actual work culture. The smartest thing a hiring manager said to me was that teams need a diverse make up of skills and personalities... that a team full of "alpha dogs" is doomed.
One good way to assess whether or not someone can do the work, and gels well with the team, is to have them prepare a case study to present to a group of folks he/she would be working with. The case should be based off an existing problem for the biz, and its important to let the candidate know they should only spend [4] hours prepping, and limit the output to a few slides, to be respectful of their time. Interviewers need to be briefed in terms of calibrating the expectations.
Often times - the best candidates will start a back and forth with their hiring manager even prior to coming in, thereby simulating what it's like to work together.